This post is about NBC, but rest assured it applies to all of the major media outlets.

NBC put out an ad, hosted by Chuck Todd, for the March Madness season. It features him dribbling a basket ball. He uses the analogy of basketball to describe the relationship news programs have with politicians, leaders and citizens. He analogizes the players as the politicians. He analogizes the referees as the news corps.

So where does that leave citizens?

Right. Spectators. This is exactly how the news programs AND the politicians view citizens. THEY have control and we are the “spectators”. Watching the “show”. The “game”. That is how they see us.

A study from 2014 out of Princeton University[1] demonstrated conclusively that nothing citizens wanted was included in legislation and EVERYTHING that the oligarchs wanted was included. Their assessment: The United States is an oligarchy. I have no disagreement with their assessment. And our news programming is owned and directed by the oligarchy.

People are fretting over the gap between what rural Americans want and what folks in the cities want. I can tell you that rural Americans feel they are ignored. When they turn on a particular a.m. news program, at the end of the news, where weather is done, often the only weather reported is for NYC. Even news stories are LOCAL to NYC. I can cite hundreds of examples where people in the midwest or non-coastal areas of the country have faced devastating weather problems, to be ignored by coastal “elites”. But give a few flakes of snow in NYC and you would think the world has come to an end.

This sounds like a small thing, but when I stand on the porch, sunny day and lovely weather at hand, and the news is running a 24/7 weather emergency for the east coast, having just ignored the results of the same storm as it passed my house last week, you get the point. It is emblematic of how the folks in NYC treat the rest of the country. If it isn’t happening to them, it just didn’t happen. And they have little regard for the rest of our great country in many ways, but this is illustrative of what we see.

Regarding politics, take my state of Colorado. We have a most lovely combination of Cowboys and Hippies, with a grand share of techies and millennials, thrown in. We have a moderate governor and government, who are miserly with our tax money as they should be. Additionally, the people of Colorado, when given a good plan and a good idea for a project, are more than willing to vote for improvements in our state. But we own the power of this expenditure and as a group, we use it wisely.

For that reason, our state is flourishing.

Now, compare rust belt states. Fighting on with an entrenched leadership who are skimming off the top for themselves and their friends, using divisive politics to drive people into confusion, and it is no wonder states like Wisconsin, Michigan, Pennsylvania, New York, and others, are struggling financially with high taxes and poor services. These beautiful, historic places are entrenched with crooked politicians and poor planning designed to further enrich their Robber Barons.

The south is another example, of the political leadership having used racism to divide and conquer for 100’s of years now. And the citizens just keep falling for it, as their states disintegrate into poverty and neglect. Sad to watch this, the children’s education and needs neglected. This should be called child neglect. For it is. Where is the media reporting on this? Daily? No? Oil interests and corruption keep them silent.

We would like to see a fair news media. As long as this media is conglomerated into 6 main companies, owned by international Robber Barons, we will never begin to pull out of this divide.

I stand for ONE NATION. The only way we can truly become that is for all of the states to get light shined upon them. For people in NYC to understand that their families, still in these rural areas, are part of that one nation.

We must do the following:

Break up media conglomerates now

Remove the right to run ads on news shows. PERIOD. No exception.

Clearly delineate between news shows and entertainment.

Find a way to invalidate programs and networks who continuously lie and spread false propaganda, like Fox News. Countries in Europe figured out how to do this, we can, too.

Our civilization depends upon the electorate getting fair and REAL reporting. It is more than clear to the team at Revote2017 and to the entire nation, that we are being treated as “SPECTATORS” to our own democracy. It is time for this to stop. Well past time. We must reinvigorate news, investigative journalists and raise the truth to its rightful place in our historic democracy.